Journal of Nathaniel Faust, Master Supreme of Mystics

24 Jul. 20–

The Devil went down to Brooklyn. He was looking for a soul to steal. He was in no bind. He just wanted to make a deal. He came across some young girls sipping cafe lattes, drinking them hot. The Devil walked in from the hot summer air and said, “Girls, let me tell ya what: I bet you didn’t know it, but I’m a latte drinker too, and if you’d care to save a chair, I’ll make a deal with you. If they make a good enough coffee, a good, satisfying brew, I’ll give you all more than gold, for all your souls. You can pay off a debtor, or two…”

My face was… wet. When did I fall asleep? I wondered as I peeled my head off my desk. My ink bottle had spilled. Lovely. At least it was an easy fix. I dabbed my finger on my face and traced a royal blue circle around the bottle, with a couple of choice glyphs at the cardinal points. A snap of the fingers, and the bottle returned to its original place, refilling with the ink that was flowing into it from my face and the desk.

I’d been looking at heart seals again, and must’ve dozed off around… midnight? Later? Either way, I’d learned nothing else. At least, nothing that would help me save him from himself.

“There must be some way to reverse it,” I said to nobody. Sansu and Wilbur had left at some point in the last while, so I was fully alone in the New York Instinct sect. At least, besides the spirits of the house (though they don’t technically interact with people). Maybe I should get a cat. Or a sphinx; that guy in St. Petersburg said he would have a litter soon.

My stomach growled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I was pretty sure I’d had some tea or something last night. I went to the kitchen, which I managed to find after only three wrong turns without using keys—I was getting the hang of navigating despite the house spirits’ antics. There was absolutely nothing breakfasty in the fridge or the cupboards (besides plain oats), so I would have to go out and grab a bite at a cafe or something. I could shop for food later.

I was about halfway down the street when something sinister seemed to approach from all directions. My Supreme Amulet opened, indicating its powerful mystical presence. I’d seen Master handle such threats before, so I knew that if I focused on the stone in the center of the amulet, it’d show me where the enemy was. If they were capable of releasing magic energy so strongly that it was possible to feel outside of the immediate range of the spell, this must be a powerful enemy, I thought. If only I’d known.

I saw in the “pupil” of the amulet a little café on a street corner. It could’ve been on any corner in literally any major city (or even decently modern small town) on the planet. The letters were in English, however, which narrowed it down slightly from a good chunk of the world, but I still had very little to go on. Even after I noticed the fact that there was a Ray’s Pizza next door, that still left pretty much all of NYC.

“Can you, maybe, zoom out?” I felt somewhat self-conscious talking to a necklace in the middle of B street on a Friday morning, “Please?” I added in case the ancient mystical gods who infused their souls into the medallion were sticklers for good manners, like Master Bell. He’s probably old enough to tell me inside jokes about all of them, even Iogzo’u. Nothing happened. I would have to find the place in the regular modern mortal way.

“Hey, if I show you a picture of a coffee shop, do you think you might know where it is?” I asked the first well-to-do-looking college-age people I could find, a couple wearing matching “I Don’t ❤ NY, I Just Live Here” shirts.

“Absolutely,” the guy put his arm around his girlfriend, “babe, you got this. You’ve been to every café in the city.”

“Yeah, I guess,” his gf seemed a bit less interested in helping a random stranger, but she also appeared to want to live up to that promise. The vanity of millennials (like any other generation of young adults) is one of the strongest forces known to man.

“Ok,” I held up the amulet, “my, uh, friend sent me this as a clue to where he’s celebrating his birthday, but, uh, I don’t recognize it!” Fortunately, the couple was able to see the image, and the fanciness of the necklace was just the right amount of eccentric for someone who would look comfortable surrounded by the expensive brownstones that lined the street.

“Oh,” the girl wrinkled her nose at the picture and lowered her sunglasses, “that’s over in the not-poor area of Brooklyn, corner of Willoughby and Dunfield. Ooh! Babe, can we get sushi from that place over by the bridge?” She and her boyfriend wandered away cooing about something, without so much as waiting for a “thank you.”

Never mind, I thought, at least now you have an address. I snapped the ring and middle fingers of both hands and rubbed my palms together to summon my spark. I traced a circle of burning orange-gold energy in the air and declared my destination in a strong, clear voice. The café appeared right in front of me, and I stepped through the portal. Much faster than a taxi.

The little shop, creatively named “Java Joint,” was absolutely hot with some kind of magic. Not even the Grand Tibetan Harmony Temple, with a room holding over 20,000 disciples casting spells constantly, was so suffused with energy. This was to be my first great test as Master Supreme; I had to prove I was worthy of taking over his mantle. I pulled on the door.

It didn’t open. I pushed, and again, nothing happened. Was this one of those places where they have a perfectly good door that they just don’t use? It didn’t seem so; the chalk sandwich board offering something called a “Java Junkie Juice” for only $3.33 was right next to it. I pressed my face against the window, thinking that someone had accidentally locked the door, and I would just need to get their attention.

What I saw chilled me to my core; I shivered despite the hot, humid summer weather.

At one of the tables, a group of high-school girls had joined hands in a circle, with some… being? holding the hands of the somewhat chubby one with, like, a hundred bracelets, and the one with spiky dark green hair. The girl in the pink sundress wasn’t touching whatever it was, but she was still sitting like someone had replaced her spine with an electrified rod, then thrown her in a half-frozen lake. Jittery, but somehow stiff and still. I tried to use the amulet to see what the thing the trio was linking with was, but even it could only show me a vague outline, a man made of red mist.

I had read books at the library when I was younger about how teens, especially girls, liked to pretend at witchcraft. Usually, those books only took place at slumber parties, and the “rituals” were just a gag. I wondered if he had ever had to deal with an amateur coven scenario. You’d think that if enough people actually did that sort of thing, something would take notice of at least a few of them.

The amulet’s light revealed some kind of ward around the building. I wasted valuable time trying to hide my presence by attempting to dismantle it just enough to be able to slip in. It had virtually no effect, and the ritual seemed to be nearing its conclusion. The girls were now starting to shake violently, and… were they glowing? I had no more time to lose; I pulled the ritual blade I’d found in that Mayan temple from its special harness in my shorts, reflecting on how I should probably get a bag, or a coat, or something, as it’d be helpful to have more space for things I can’t put in my soul pocket.

I plunged the blade right in the middle of the door, its strange magic-negating edge utterly annihilating the spell that had kept it sealed. Its regular, though strangely unbreakable, obsidian edge utterly shatters the glass door. I leapt over the shards, trying to interrupt the ritual with my entrance. I was too late.

“—ternum iurare!” The three girls collapsed; whatever energy had been forcing them rigidly upright cut off. I tried to get a look at the entity with which they’d formed their circuit, but there was nothing there, not even, as before, out of the corner of my eye. In fact, there was nobody else in the shop, which shouldn’t have been surprising, but the dregs of several patrons’ coffees were scattered around on tables, and even a couple cups’ worth were puddled around shards of what had been their containers. Everyone else who had been in the café had suddenly disappeared.

Green Hair and Bracelets were starting to moan. I approached the table to find that it was still vibrating with energy, which, if I hadn’t had my blade, would probably have been too powerful to go anywhere near. Like a nuclear core. When I managed to get about two steps away, a powerful force managed to catch me in its grip. A second later, I saw that it was Bracelets, who had just a second ago been a bit out of shape. Now, she was Olympic-gymnast-toned. She’d moved to grab me in less time than it took to see it, and her grip was iron.

“What happened here?” I demanded, “I came to help.”

“Ha! Hahahaha!” Green Hair started laughing in response to my question, “What, you think we need a man like you to ‘help’?” She mocked. Then, she flicked her wrist. I went flying into the counter. It hurt, but I’ve had much worse. What was more concerning was the way her magic hadn’t followed the regular rules of human mystical practice: there’d been no effort, reagents, incantation, glyph, or relic involved. It seemed almost like fae magic, or even divine power, though from the sensation of the thrust itself, she was undoubtedly human (if a little mean).

“All right,” I pulled myself to my feet, keeping my hands held up in the I don’t wanna fight you gesture, “I guess… running at you with a blade like that might’ve seemed… scary,” I kicked the blade a few feet away, making sure it was still close enough to grab if necessary. Bracelets calmed down a bit (when I stood up, she looked like she was getting ready to rush me), but Green Hair still glowered at me.

“Quiet, loser,” she somehow, again, managed to cast a spell, keeping me paralyzed without any sort of apparent… spell. Both of the upright girls then started to leave the shop. Pink Dress was still lolled back in her chair like a dead fish. Or a dead person. Fortunately, though it was weirdly instant, the spell itself wasn’t extremely powerful, and I was able to break it through mere concentration.

“Aren’t you going to help your friend?” I used a spell to fix the shattered door before the girls could just walk out. It got their attention.

“Look,” this time it was Bracelets who spoke, “it’s not really your business, so just leave us alone, whoever you are.”

“Or we might have to force you to.”

“Ha!” I couldn’t help but laugh. Even if her magic had been ten times stronger than mine, it was impossible to take a green haired teenager wearing the limited edition hibiscus pattern SlothSnuggle sweatshirt seriously. If it had been the dark brown pattern, maybe, but not the hibiscus lei covered one.

“Something funny?”

“Sorry, it’s just hard to be intimidated by you in that cute sweatshirt,” after I admitted it, Green Hair blushed violently, just what I needed. I took her distraction (embarrassment) and, before she or Bracelets could react, summoned the Lunar Chains of Chang’e and bound the two teens tightly together. Their cockiness was immediately replaced with shock as the mystical moonbeams held them fast.

“What the–” Green Hair sputtered.

“I think it’s time that I introduce myself,” I bowed, “my name is Nathaniel, and I am currently the greatest mystic on the planet. Now,” I pulled the two over to a pair of chairs, leaving them powerlessly stuck so I could check Pink Dress for signs of life (or… worse). They objected violently, but the chains, unfortunately, do nothing to stop that. I tuned them out while I peered through the eyehole of my amulet at their friend. Nothing–not even signs of spiritual release or damage. She just… didn’t have a soul anymore, and died. I turned my attention back to the others.

“–you bastard!” they were, aside from remaining furious about the chains, starting to tire out from fighting them (and from yelling quite a few expletives at me). I pulled a chair up to the table I’d sat them at.

“What did you do to your friend?”

“Nothing, Emma must’ve done it wrong,” they were determined not to tell me anything.

“Then why didn’t you seem worried about her at all? Why try to leave the café without even making sure she was ok?”

“Because you attacked us, weirdo!” Bracelets seemed more convinced of her innocence than Green Hair. She was spending more energy focusing on my questions, and had been more… instinctive this whole time.

“Ok, I can get how that would be a higher priority for you,” I conceded, “can you tell me what you did?” They answered in tandem.

“Girls stuff!”

“Hmm… Can you at least tell me what happened to everyone else in the building? It’s my job to prevent people from… disappearing.”

“No clue,” Green Hair let out a grunt, and the chains fell away from them. This time, I was ready for their attack; I used the Fractals of Fa’ ‘’Ghan to become intangible and, more importantly, immune to any magic used within the Earthly realm. I don’t know what they did, however, because the moment I entered the magical state, the café warped around me. The air became thick and dark, and the girls, while still visible, were more like ghosts than people. They became indistinct, transparent. I then noticed that there were other indistinct forms around the room, only these were frozen in place. While the Fractals’ realm generally distorted the physical realm to its spiritual shape, this was all wrong. Spirits shouldn’t be so frozen, and, obviously, they shouldn’t be disconnected from physical reality. It was as if everyone in the café had been disintegrated, and their souls still hadn’t had the time to disperse into the aether of whatever realm they were destined to.

Panicking from all the wrongness of the other realm, I broke the spell and returned to the physical. It wasn’t until then that I realized there’d been a loud wailing in the other realm, like all those souls were crying out in agony.

“–and that!” Bracelets hit me square in the face with enough force to send me tumbling back into the counter again. I was getting annoyed with these two.

“Alright, kids,” I stood up, my voice dripping with venom (and my nose dripping with blood), “now I think it’s time to teach you a lesson about manners.”

“Oh yeah?” Green Hair spun her hand around in a circle, creating a slight vortex that began to warp the space around us, “maybe you need to learn that you aren’t as great as you think.”

I wasn’t about to let her finish whatever that spell was going to be. I called upon the ancient lords of the nine starry seas, using their power to quell powerful currents of the wind and waves (and magic), immediately killing the witch’s momentum. In the ensuing quiet before the boom from the cancellation, I cast the Nymph’s awakening to snare both of my adversaries inside newly grown tendrils from the (thankfully real) hardwood floor. I then invoked the nightmarish power of Ohk, trapping them inside visions of their worst moments. I was about to enter the mindscape of Green Hair, who seemed the bigger risk of escaping, when I was overcome by a wave of the terrible power that had drawn me to this place.

“Ahh,” the satisfied sigh and accompanying clink made me turn. Had one of the souls come back from that state they’d been trapped in?

“Are you–?” the man was seated in the chair where the invisible member of the ritual had been. Something about him made me sick; I couldn’t even ask if he was ok.

“Yes, I’m having quite a fine day,” he lifted the cup and took another long sip, letting out a cloud of steam as he sighed again, before returning it to its saucer, “did you know that cold coffee is actually worth drinking? I thought it was just a fad from imbeciles whose tastes were spoiled by eating too much salt and sugar,” he winked at me, as though it were an inside joke, “that stuff will kill you. Oh! But where are my manners–would you like something to drink? Coffee? Tea? Brandy?” he looked at me expectantly, waiting for an answer.

“No thanks,” I realized I’d been holding my breath, “who–?”

“Right! Introductions,” he bowed unnaturally low, “I’m afraid I do tend to forget them, bad habit caused by my knowing everything about everyone already, but you call me The Devil,” on the last words, his voice became… evil. Horrible. I couldn’t help but stare– he was tall, but not unusually so, and the rest of his features were also very plain. He was handsome enough, in a hollywood-extra-with-one-line-in-a-spy-thriller-party-scene type of way; the kind of person who nobody would ever think about later if they met on the street. He was the greatest progenitor of evil and darkness across the entire omniverse, striking fear in the hearts of men, demons, gods, and otherbeings since the beginning of time. He was the most dangerous being or entity that any mystic, Supreme or not, would ever face in their lifetime. He had just… manifested another iced coffee out of thin air.

“Sit! I insist,” he gestured to the seat at his left, between him and the poor body of Pink Dress, “and don’t even think about passing up this coffee. I have no idea how they get it so rich with just cream and sugar.”

I reluctantly sat down, and, fearing that the slightest disobedience would bring out the legendary wrath that could be read about in the bedtime stories of pretty much any culture ever, I accepted and took a sip of the iced coffee. Maybe he poisoned this, and I’ll be able to see that Master was the only positive thing I could think of while being held prisoner under his stare. It was, actually, pretty good for iced coffee, I’ll admit it. I generally prefer soda or energy drinks for caffeinated beverages, but this was good enough.

“Glad you like it,” he seemed like he could read my thoughts, “now: to business. You are the new Supreme?” he said it like a question, but didn’t wait for an answer, “that was impressive, how easily you managed to… neutralize my latest acquisitions. Normally I would never be so formal, but would you be willing to negotiate about the price of your– well, you know what I mean.”

I wanted to kick his teeth in. How dare he threaten not only my world but my home city. I couldn’t tell if he was manipulating my emotions, or if I was actually that pissed off.

“I’d rather burn alive than give my soul to anyone, much less you,” I spat, standing up. I tried to throw the coffee in his face, but it dissolved in black fire before it left my hand.

“A shame, though I cannot say I’m surprised,” he seemed unfazed by my outburst, again, like he’d been the one to ignite it. I started to leave, but my fury was suddenly combined with the thought that he was here to ruin what I was sworn to protect, and that now was my only chance to stop him from doing anything else.

I attacked with the complete set of all Nine Heavenly Arrows, one of the most powerful anti-demonic spells in the library of the New York temple. Instead of piercing him from nine directions, as it should have, the golden-white missiles disappeared in a wave of black-crimson flames. He hadn’t even put down his coffee. I followed up with the Seals of the Last Sondrian, which, again, dissolved in a dark conflagration before it even got within three feet of him. He set down his coffee after taking a self-satisfied sip. I tried again, using the eternal flame lighter I found in the temple attic to launch a stream of all-consuming fire at my adversary. This too vanished within a seemingly impenetrable blood-red inferno.

“That last one made it past the usual border… you’ve melted the ice in my coffee,” he said, standing up. He grew taller. His clothes burned away in the same dark fire that had consumed my spells, revealing a scarred, blistered body. A pair of batlike wings emerged from his back, wide enough that they seemed to swallow the entire room. He stepped forward, and whatever invisible force was generating the blazing boundary around him pushed me back.

“Do you think you can defeat me, Nathaniel Faust? You cannot even stand close enough to touch me! A problem I assure you I do not have,” his massive arm reached out to touch my forehead, causing me to almost black out in pain. I fell backwards, crawling away while he laughed, secure in the knowledge that I could not harm him. I mustered all my strength to create the impenetrable Shield of Shambhala, the equivalent of placing an entire, infinite mountain range between you and whatever you need protection from. It didn’t even provide a second’s respite–he took another step forward, and it was consumed by the blaze. I’d lost.

I’m sorry, Master, I was quietly saying my goodbyes to the world when my hand bumped against my blade, which I’d forgotten after Green Hair had slammed me into the counter the first time. It was my last hope.

As he leisurely approached, I steeled my courage and, praying to whatever gods there are, threw myself blade-first into his protective sphere, hoping that the blade’s properties would allow it to break through the hellstorm. It nearly worked, I’d broken through the barrier, but he flapped those great wings, and knocked the blade out of my hand. He then curled his powerful fingers around my throat and lifted me off the ground.

“Any last words, wizard?” he laughed while his grip tightened.

“My– soul…” I managed to gasp.

“What about it?” the fingers loosened slightly, “I thought you would rather die than give it to me.”

“I– if you swear to le–”

“If I swear to leave? That must be the most pathetic deal I’ve ever heard.”

“Leave— this realm— forever.”

“HAhahahahaha,” I blacked out for what felt like an instant, coming to at the table, again with an iced coffee in hand, “hahahaha… ha… heh. Now THAT is a proposal,” he was now holding a parchment scroll, “I’m afraid I cannot promise that exactly, but we can hopefully reach an agreeable compromise? You see,” he was now writing on the scroll in what seemed to be blood, using a black quill pen that had a tip that looked like it was made of bone, “one mortal soul, no matter whose, is not sufficient to get me to swear off an entire dimensional realm forever. There is an economy to these things. Hmmm… I suppose you would, of course, want me gone immediately, likely with no return for as long as possible (that rules out timesharing), we could, I suppose, do that…” he muttered to himself for a couple of minutes, writing and then unwriting a couple of lines on the scroll.

“How much time is my soul worth?” I asked, “I am Supreme, after all.”

“Yes, that’s true, but, and this is just a general rule, so it might actually not come up, supreme souls usually lose any extra value they get from being supremes almost immediately upon relinquishing them, so I cannot factor that into much of the consideration here. I’d say your base soul is worth, at most, hmm… twenty-nine years, that is, supposing you want a total infernal blockade: no hellbeings here for that long, end of story.”

“That… isn’t as much as I would like,” I wasn’t sure how I should feel at being told my soul was worth only twenty nine years of protection, “is there another way?” Should I take the offer?

“Well, you could, like Clarissa and Jade just did, add in the souls of other people, but I figure you would be against that… Most Supremes are content with getting ‘the power to repel me’ or something, which usually means that I can really only come when fully, completely summoned. If the deal were just about me, no other demons, that would probably add at least twenty more years… now if….” he trailed off again.

Twenty more years! That’s almost double! I was starting to get tempted, then another idea came to mind, “what if I threw in my blade?”

“That thing? Nah, I do not see much value in keeping things that can hurt me. Like how most of you humans don’t tend to own scorpions or tigers. Though… you have given me an interesting thought…” he furiously scribbled something out, “aha! Yes, that’s it.”

“What?” I couldn’t help being curious.

“If you agree to handle… some favors for me, and have no complaints in dealing with any demons that are on your world after I leave it, I will swear to abstain from this realm, unless explicitly summoned according to the proper old ways, for the period of your entire lifespan, plus twenty-nine years, or for seventy-four years from the current day, whichever is longer,” he handed me the scroll, which basically said everything he’d just described, plus a few examples and “entitlements clauses” in latin (written using theban script).

“I suppose I have to sign this in my own blood now?”

“Of course!” he handed me the bone quill, “certain things are clichés for a reason,” I signed on the line, and the scroll rolled itself up, sealing itself in red wax with the sign of a pentagram. He held out his right hand.

“I do hope you will do me the courtesy of sealing this deal with a handshake?” my hand practically shot out on its own to grasp his, and his unholy fire tore into my skin for the first time.